The use of dashboards in federal government agencies
increased dramatically following the Obama administration’s
Open Government Initiative issued in January 2009, which
espoused the principles of transparency, participation, and
collaboration.

Social media continue to grow across the globe, and the United States federal government is no exception. The administration and Congress actively and increasingly use social media to communicate, to take information
in, and to collaborate across boundaries.

Governments, generally, are much better at giving out money than they are at figuring out where the money is spent, and how successfully. Progress on this front has certainly been made by cities, counties, states and the federal government, but there’s still a long way to go.

“Abracadabra,” “hocus-pocus” and “presto-chango” are clichéd magic words designed to deliver a variety of wishes to boys and girls in books. Sometimes they work, and sometimes they don’t, and sometimes they have perverse effects. The lesson, typically, is to be careful of what you wish for.

This guide offers ideas on how agencies can start closing the gaps between managers and staff, as well as tips on how to use the Staff/Manager Alignment Score to supplement and refine efforts to improve the workplace.

Big problems call for big solutions. And so, with the states mired in historically unpleasant fiscal times, many have decided they need to go far beyond Band-Aid solutions in favor of tourniquets and transplants.

Over the last 13 years, we published more than 300 research reports and interviewed some
300 senior government executives. It is from this rich library that we’ve identified several
broad societal trends that we believe are changing what it takes to be a successful leader at
all levels of government.